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Atlantic Canada
Halifax Waterfront
Institute for Ocean Research Enterprise
For our readers not familiar, can you give a brief overview
of Institute for Ocean Research Enterprise and its role in
ocean related activities on Canada’s East Coast?
IORE is a federally incorporated not-for-profit corporation.
We have one and only one purpose, and that is connecting research
and industry for the purpose of economic development
growth in the ocean sector. So it is not research for research’s
sake, but research as a competitive tool. So we are really an
economic development agenda, and we use research as the
tool of choice.
Please give to us in numbers the cumulative economic
and social impact of this industry on the Atlantic Canada
Region.
I can give you some rough numbers. There have been some recent
studies, most recently by OECD regarding the size of the
global ocean economy. In rough terms, it turns out that about
5% of the global GDP surrounds the global ocean economy.
In the U.S. it’s almost 5%; in China it’s about 8%. Canada,
as it turns out, is only about 2%. A lot of this is due simply to
geography, as many of our bigger cities are toward the middle
of the continent and not on the coast, so partly it is a population
distribution issue. To accentuate the problem, this country
has the longest coast line in the world. So we have a relatively
small population of about 36 million, the world’s longest coast
line, and most of our population is not on the ocean. If you
then zoom into Atlantic Canada, it is a significantly different
picture. In Atlantic Canada about 15 to 20% – varying by
definition and specific jurisdiction – of the economy is ocean
based. Here it is hugely important, totally an ocean economy
in this part of the country. It is really the most important sector
of the economy in Atlantic Canada.
When you look at the universities, the corporations and
the individuals in your region, what do you count as their
greatest strengths?
I think the fact that we are small and relatively closely connected
means that there is good opportunity for collaboration.
The biggest city in the region is Halifax, and the total population
is 500,000. Going back to the greater ocean economy I
like to say there are five components:
• security and defense,
• energy from the ocean,
• food from the ocean,
• marine transportation and
• marine tourism.
Atlantic Canada has good representation in all five of those
sectors of the global ocean economy, so we are not a ‘one trick
pony.’ It’s really an opportunity and a good moment in time
30 MTR January/February 2017